| Hermann Broch's Die Schlafwandler (1932) and Der Tod des Vergil (1945) comprise literary experiments that critically engage conceptions of individuality, commonality, and the disintegration of values in modern society. This study analyses these novels as literary experiments in narrative innovation and the ethical philosophy of literary subjectivity. The dissertation begins with an overview of theories of self-consciousness and their considerations of the linguistically structured relationship between social determination and the self-consciousness of the individual, leading in the end to Manfred Frank's notion of the irreducibility of individuality and the light it sheds upon Broch's criticism of the disintegration of values. Textual analyses of these novels demonstrate how Broch's literary treatment of social decay and the search for a new and binding ethic are refracted in the structure, dialogue, and the metaphysical language of the novels' narration. The congruent searches for meaning in language, and for an ethical value in meaning, cannot free themselves from their environment of dissolution: the chaos and social decay accompanying the two world wars represents less a cause to seek a viable ethic than the hypothetical basis for an ethic itself, one which continually eludes realization. Broch moves beyond the dichotomy of determination versus freedom, and approaches this problem as a negative dialectic between disorientation and apathy in narrative. This negative dialectic points beyond suffering and towards a future ethical stability, an important departure point for Broch's work.;The insistence upon an irreducible kernel of individuality as a prerequisite for communication and ethics thus informs the structure of Broch's narration. This position, which is corroborated by Manfred Frank, Terry Eagleton and Emmanuel Levinas, is based upon this premise. Broch's novels reflect upon the modern condition and experiment with the notion that the perpetually contingent aspect of meaning also ensures a measure of freedom and creativity for the individual. In the end, his negative dialectic produces an allegory of belief, a theoretical leap of faith required to maintain a notion of hope. This is clearly a metaphysical proposition, yet it proves to be no more so than any other mode of expression. |
